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   <title>VisIt 1.2.8 Release Notes</title>
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<center><b><font size="6">VisIt 1.2.8 Release Notes</font></b></center>

<p>Welcome to VisIt's release notes page. This page describes the important
enhancements and bug-fixes that were added to this release.</p>
<p><b><font size="4">Features added in version 1.2.8</font></b></p>
<ul>
  <li>VisIt allows you to pick a center of rotation so rotating  plots when you are zoomed in does not cause them to whiz off of the screen. To use this option, click on the <i>Choose center</i> button in the vis 
  window's toolbar or popup menu and click on a point on the plot. The picked 
  point will be the new center of rotation and will always appear on the screen.</li>
  <li>VisIt now provides a MinMax query that can determine the minimum and maximum values from a database; not just the selected plot.</li>
  <li>VisIt now provides queries that allow you to determine the number of zones or nodes in a mesh.</li>
  <li>VisIt now allows you to perform axis-aligned lineouts. If you press the Shift key when doing a lineout, the line will be aligned to the horizontal or vertical axis, depending on the slope of the line.</li>
  <li>VisIt is now installed with the Boxlib database reader plugin on the SCF.</li>
  <li>VisIt no longer saves the remote host in your config file so it will not try to automatically gain access to a remote computer at startup.</li>
  <li>The SAMRAI, Tetrad, and PDB database reader plugins are now available for the Windows version of VisIt.</li>
  <li>VisIt now checks for bad material values so it is easier to determine if a data file was not written correctly.</li>
  <li>Visit now issues a warning when an invalid material is encountered.</li>
  <li>The SAMRAI and Tetrad database reader plugins are now build on mcr on the OCF.</li>
  <li>VisIt's cursor now changes to crosshairs when entering pick mode.</li>
  <li>Base index is now set up for Boxlib data files.</li>
  <li>The Mesh plot can optionally now draw all cell edges.</li>
  <li>VisIt now tells its compute engines to clear their caches when you restore a session file.</li>
  <li>VisIt's clipping code now handles 2D cell types.</li>
  <li>VisIt's Compute engines window now has a button to tell the active compute engine to clear its caches. Press this button if your computer becomes sluggish and the compute engine will free up some memory.</li>
  <li>You can now open Boxlib data files by opening a "Header" file.</li>
  <li>All variables are now available from Boxlib data files.</li>
  <li>VisIt's config files are now readable by the Windows notepad program.</li>
</ul>
<p><b><font size="4">Bugs fixed in version 1.2.8</font></b></p>
<ul>
  <li>VisIt's parallel compute engine can hang when changing time steps.</li>
  <li>VisIt returns the wrong material list for individual Flash files when the list of materials has to be inferred from the ireg array. This 
  bug caused subset selection to vary unexpectedly over time and it also caused the compute engine to crash when creating animations involving the FilledBoundary plot.</li>
  <li>Material selection revealed an internal error message.</li>
  <li>Certain expressions crashed VisIt's compute engine.</li>
  <li>The IsoVolume operator can crash VisIt's compute engine.</li>
  <li>Applying the IsoVolume operator and then applying the IsoSurface operator crashed VisIt's compute engine.</li>
  <li>VisIt hangs on startup when old configuration files are present.</li>
  <li>Plots disappear when animating over time when making movies.</li>
  <li>VisIt saves the remote host into the config file.</li>
  <li>The nmats expression does not return the right values.</li>
  <li>VisIt's qtssh program, which is used to log into remote computers on Windows, crashes when the Cancel button is clicked.</li>
  <li>VisIt's GUI is very sluggish with 2000+ variables in the variables list.</li>
  <li>The matvf expression is not calculated correctly.</li>
  <li>VisIt does not read all of the variables in a VTK file.</li>
  <li>The Integrate query for area under a curve returns the wrong value.</li>
  <li>Zones are missing in the FilledBoundary plot.</li>
  <li>The OnionPeel operator should not display or work on domains that are not in the current SIL.</li>
  <li>Subset categories are not immediately available in the OnionPeel operator window.</li>
  <li>The OnionPeel operator window does not have the correct initial values.</li>
  <li>Pick indicator is <i>way</i> far away from the pick point.</li>
  <li>When a single file is in the Selected files list, VisIt's GUI shows the file's entire path.</li>
  <li>VisIt's compute engine crashed when trying to read an Ensight data file.</li>
  <li>Fullframe mode requires another expose event to fully activate.</li>
  <li>Pick problems with high aspect ratio zones.</li>
  <li>Non-square geometries are not honored by VisIt's CLI.</li>
  <li>The Surface plot does not have the right view in scalable rendering mode.</li>
  <li>The legend for Pseudocolor plots is incorrect when Skew scaling is used.</li>
  <li>The nmats expression does not work properly with the FilledBoundary plot.</li>
  <li>VisIt does not save its global toolbar visibility setting into the config file.</li>
  <li>The Windows version of VisIt uses the wrong file name when saving config files.</li>
  <li>The Password window's Cancel button is too close to the password text field.</li>
  <li>The wrong warning message is issued when a remote engine launch is cancelled.</li>
  <li>The View window's rotz command has numerical errors.</li>
  <li>The matvf expression always returns 0 for some Boxlib data files.</li>
</ul>
<p>Click the following link to view the release notes for the previous version
of VisIt: <a href="relnotes1.2.7.html">VisIt 1.2.7 Release Notes</a>.</p>
<p>Click the following link to view the release notes for the next version 
of VisIt: <a href="relnotes1.3.html">VisIt 1.3 Release Notes</a>.</p>

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